Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan as VP

Comments

Too radical. Mitt “Bob” Dole will go with a “safe” choice like George W. Bush’s former budget director Rob Portman in an attempt to distance himself from the failed policies of George W. Bush. After all, it’s not like he’s going against a candidate who defeated a Clinton.

Dumb question, though. Can Ryan still run for Congress if he’s also running for VP? He’s a good guy, and I don’t want his political career coming to an end solely because he chose to jump aboard the sinking ship known as the “twit” co-owner of a horse who bombed at the London Olympics.

This is a big gamble. Roadmap Ryan has proven quite effectively that he has no idea what he’s talking about, however, he talks and looks the part so the question is whether Obama’s people are able to cut through the B.S.

@Lorax, Lieberman ran for VP and Senate in 2000. If the election ends up in a tie it goes to the House and Ryan’s vote might be needed to swing the WI delegation to Romney. In 2000 there was a possibility that Lieberman would have been able to cast the vote to elect himself Bush’s VP. Ironically Gore might have been needed to cast the deciding vote as existing VP. It is the incoming Congress that votes in such matters, not the lame duck Congress.

I guess Joe Biden had “no confidence” in Barack Obama in his “just in case” run for the Senate in 2008 as he was elected to the Senate in Connnecticut and as VP.

Lyndon Johnson ran for Senator in 1960 at the same time he ran as JFK’s Veep. Also many in Congress have run as in-office elected officials without resigning their positions–i.e. Al Gore and Dan Quale.

Strupp
While I disagree with your Ryan statement you forgot to mention Joe Biden, the current Vice President, and all of his brilliant B.S. statements spread over many years. I could spend hours providing his lame brain, wrong public utterances and assertions, including that he is an admitted plagiarist, and furthermore plagiarized an entire speech in one of his failed runs for the Presidency.

Confirmed just now at 6am CST by the push notification on the Mitt’s VP app, it’s Paul Ryan. I think it’s a stroke of genius. It could very well swing WI, which is no small cog in the big wheel Romney needs to win. Having met several times with Congressman Ryan, I couldn’t disagree further with J Strupp. So I guess we can expect NObama to go nuclear on how RomneyRyan hates senior citizens and want to pull the Medicare safety net out from underneath them. Gotta believe the couple day delay in announcement has been spent carefully architecting the counter attack and crafting their own assault. Reince and others are about to earn their pay.

The Romney bus tour today visits Ashland, Virginia–a small town just north of Richmond. I will be there as I am told they will visit ‘Homemades by Suzanne’, a wonderful small caterer on the RR tracks that pass through town on the way to D.C. I lived in Ashland for years and next to the annual Tomato Festival this is a big deal.
If nothing else I’ll have a great boxed lunch BBQ.

Wilson828 – for those 55 and older his SS plan changes nothing, zip, nada. For those 55 and younger it allows you to invest 33% of your entitlement in the free market – your choice. It also modernizes the retirement age and makes sure SS remains solvent. So how will that destroy your or anyone’s entitlement?

You forgot Medicare and Medicaid Wilson. He wants to destroy both of those as well. Now Mitt can give tax cuts to his buddies while Ryan pays for them by dismantling safety nets. Ryan’s intentions are clear and right there out on the open for anyone who wants to read.

Randy. Like I said it’s a gamble. Biden had his pitfalls but the GOP masked them quite well by putting up an inarticulate soccer mom as VP. Biden should be able to hold his own against Ryan. The question is whether or not moderate voters will fall for Roadmap Ryan’s charm our actually see him for what he is.

I’ll be honest. I’m glad this happened. I want this guy exposed now as a VP candidate and not in 4 or 8 years when he runs for President.

for the record please correct me. the Dems want to basically keep Social Security and Medicare intact the way it is. the Repubs, via Paul Ryan, want to disband Social Security and substitute private insurance through insurance companies with the premiums coming from who (taxpayer or government?). The Repubs want to have a voucher system for everyone in the country to buy health care. friends, your expertise will be appreciated. cordially. Dick Steinberg

@J Strupp, if you think Social Security and Medicare are sustainable in their current form, your are at best uneducated, likely an idiot, and at worst, a thief. You have no ethical right to steal the future earnings of your grandchildren in order to fund your retirement.

“The Dems want to basically keep Social Security and Medicare intact the way it is.”

Yes. Basically.

“The Repubs, via Paul Ryan, want to disband Social Security….”

Disband no. Not completely. They want to reduce benefits you and I paid into the system. Here’s CBO: “Traditional retirement benefits would be reduced below those scheduled under current law for many workers who are age 55 or younger in 2011. People with lower earnings would experience smaller reductions in benefits, and those with higher earnings would experience larger reductions.”

“…and substitute private insurance through insurance companies with the premiums coming from who (taxpayer or government?).”

Taxpayers. Taxpayers pay the premiums and the costs if they get sick. Ryan’s Roadmap is specifically designed to issue vouchers, (um, I think they call it premium support these days) which have a value tied to a blend of CPI and medical care components of CPI. Health care costs currently run WELL above this rate. The value of the vouchers would fall further and further behind the rising cost of health care so the cost burden to beneficiaries eventually overwhelms the voucher amount, thus transferring medical costs on to you and me. You see? Magic. The government just made our health care problem go away. It spends less, you go bankrupt if you get sick. This Ryan guy is sooo smart.

And BTW, Medicaid is privatized and gutted under Roadmap Ryan’s plan too. Not that Republicans care much about this. The employer tax exclusion is eliminated, replaced by a tax credit that grows more slowly than medical costs. Ryan would replace the current Medicaid system with a block-grant system that would, again, not keep pace with health care costs or the increase in the number of Medicaid beneficiaries. The states get less, Medicaid’s problem goes bye bye. See? Ryan is so smart. Medicaid leeches will just have to go out and get a job.

But, J. Strupp, isn’t that the very sticking-it-to-the-rich you dream of when richer people pay more and get less later?

Plus, you can argue it’s reducing the value of that paid into the system, but no one can reach back and change what has actually been paid into the system. That value is also being reduced every time the fed prints money.

Medicare doesn’t pay for full health care now. Most using Medicare already pay for a supplement insurance plan of some kind. There are fewer people available to support more users. Costs continue to escalate because Obamacare did nothing to reduce the price of healthcare as promised.

Quitcherbitchin’ and give us your idea for a fix since you can’t seem to find an idea out there you like. Oh, and you can tell me, while you are at it, how both Medicare and Social Security are sustainable under the current plans.

“… isn’t that the very sticking-it-to-the-rich you dream of when richer people pay more and get less later?”

No. Because, according to Ryan’s Roadmap, he’d cut taxes for rich people (of course) and make the tax cuts deficit neutral by closing loopholes and tax exclusions. Except he’s never named one loophole he’d close. Either has Romney. Because the loopholes big enough to make his tax cuts deficit neutral involve raising taxes on his buddies.

“Medicare doesn’t pay for full health care now.”

Sure. Absolutely they don’t. Under Ryan, vouchers will dwarf this difference by the time I’m in my mid-60’s. Take a CPI and a medical component of CPI, put them together and then take medical cost inflation of, say, 7% and extrapolate that deficit out for the next 30 or 40 years. Any idiot can propose cutting funding for something, not changing the cost structure of it, wave their magic wand and call the system fixed.

How would I fix our broken health care system?

Single payer. Intermediaries are a waste of space. Eliminate patent monopolies for prescription drugs that drive up costs substantially. Offer discounts to patients to go overseas to have procedures done that they would usually have in the U.S. for 50 times the cost (check around some time and see what other countries charge for major surgery). Open our borders to qualified medical personnel from abroad by making protectionist state medical licensing easier to obtain to drive down doctor salaries to levels seen in other advanced economies (we outsourced our manufacturing labor and no one cared). Stream line patient treatment with a national health records database (we’re doing this right now).

Try and get any of these ideas past the lobbyist whores in Washington. Most of these ideas involve hammering their master’s pocketbooks to the advantage of the working class and not the other way around.

Therefore contrary to Strupp’s statement that the Republican plan “wants to reduce benefits you… paid into the system”, your benefits will reflect exactly what you would (and will) receive. Anyone 55 and over at the time the plan is enacted will have absolutely no change in their retirement benefits.

And most of the Social Security payments I made during my lifetime were based on a retirement age of 65. Well, along the way it was changed to 66–thus a reduction of benefits. It’s been done before.

I find it hilarious the extent to which Ryan is being dissected, analyzed, and Palenized all across the spectrum. Oh, I welcome it and have no objection–yet. Let me have a little fun and make a prediction. Some MSM or fringe media outlet will try to smear and ‘Cain’ize Ryan by producing some female from his past that he dated, worked with, or otherwised with, who will make some outrageous charge about something that is impossible to disprove. If it doesn’t happen I will recant here.

Why I find it hilarious is that if the same effort were directed at Joe Biden by the media with the same purposes, he could easily be shown to be the dunderhead he is.

“Therefore contrary to Strupp’s statement that the Republican plan ‘wants to reduce benefits you… paid into the system’, your benefits will reflect exactly what you would (and will) receive. ”

Yes. Assuming Dick is over 55 (a good assumption) I made the mistake of including him in my statement about SS. I sort of had another point I was making but thanks for the clarification there Randy.

As for SS, according to CBO the system has enough of a revenue stream and money in trust to keep SS benefits unchanged until at least 2038. After that, SS has the ability to pay 75-80% of current benefit levels forever. Simply treat SS like any other general budget item in, say, 2039 or whenever we run a shortfall (we had no problem spending another 2% GDP on “defense” over the last decade) and be done with it.

Over half of current recepients rely on SS as their primary source of income. Cutting SS benefits should be the last thing in the world we should be considering.